Harold C. Goddard (1878–1950)

This pamphlet is truly amazing, about one of the world's great mystical poets and artists, by an author who understands him. Goddard writes a key to understanding Blake, who wrote and drew in symbols that are both universal and his own, and may be mysterious to us. The key is crucial to those of us thoroughly grounded and reliant only on the Ways of Knowing of sensory perception and reason, as it guides us into the alternative Way of Knowing of spirituality and the heart. Blake's language is show more the language of Divine Reality, of imagination and vision as Blake would say, of answering that of God in us as Quakers would say. If George Fox had met William Blake (around a century apart) they surely would have recognized each other, and Quakers might not have rejected the Arts for 300 years.
Goddard's essay is not in academic style, but elucidates Blake's profound, rich, and complex faith and vision of Reality. It feels like a privilege and an opening to read it. When Blake was 8, he told his parents that he had seen a tree full of angels. He shared his later visions with us in poetry, engravings, and painting.
Goddard authored another Pendle HIll Pamphlet, #57, also wonderful.
This pamphlet, by the way, is one of a few wonderful PHPs on literature and art. See, for example, the ones on the Iliad (#91) or Walt Whitman (#395), or Fritz Eichenberg (#68 and 257), or those by Dorothea Blom on art. (Look under the Art and Literature tags for more.) show less

100% bonkers but awesome. Goddard was from a very different age of criticism - one rejecting much of the criticism of the early 20th century, but also coming to terms with a move toward historical study and context rather than the slightly ignorant processes that had come from the Victorian era.

Often, his points are completely absurd, argued on a philosophical level rather than even remotely relating to form or context. And his elitism - particularly when it comes to material he believes to show more have been written for the so-called "groundlings" - is deeply off-putting. But when he's right, he's right. Paradoxically, for a posthumously published work, I think this second volume is better than the first, perhaps because Goddard's high-art style works better with the more complicated later works, when Shakespeare really was writing with something of a bubble, rather than the earlier works where many of Goddard's beliefs were, if conceptually tight, ill-related to any realities of Shakespeare's era.

An interesting read, but hardly in the Top 100 works on the Bard. show less

Hmmm. An odd one, this. Goddard's critical style is now supremely outdated (A.D. Nuttall makes but one, dismissive reference to him in his recent "Shakespeare the Thinker"). What's more, with Goddard dying before the text was published, some of this reads as if it is still in draft format. Ideas go on for pages, astoundingly poetic, but often amounting to very little. No doubt Goddard was a sublime intelligence, and his words are beautiful. His insight into the characters is fascinating, show more even if I find much of it dubious. (Any critic can - and should - defend Shylock OR Katherina OR Joan of Arc, but all three? Methinks the critic doth protest too much.)

Goddard is outright bonkers, which leads to wild variations in quality. Some of his opinions come off as psychadelic counter-culture ramblings; others tap into a vein of brilliance that is well-worth exploring. But it's fairly uneven. Oddly, for a posthumously published work, Goddard's work resounds more in the second volume, where he tackles the mature plays with deftness and accuracy. He is at his weakest in the early chapters here, betraying that attitude of his generation (carried over somewhat from the 19th century Romantics) that Shakespeare knew he was "too good" for something as plebeian as the theatre. Indeed, the most dispiriting moments of the book are when Goddard falls into that old academic trap of writing off sections of the plays with the note "well, the groundlings must have their comedy". Any fellow traveler on our Bardolatrous Way is a worthy reading companion, but there are times when the Lost Generation's psychologically telling desire to separate Shakespeare the poet from Shakespeare the man is nauseating.

In Goddard's defense, perhaps I am simply of too distant a generation to truly appreciate him. Often, he will quote one or two lines from a character as definitive proof of what the character or Shakespeare himself was thinking. Yet, even though I consider myself a part-time Shakespeare academic myself, I can barely even grasp how he has reached that point. Not always - there is undoubtedly much true brilliance in these books - and anyone with this much reverence for William Shakespeare deserves to be read for many years to come but, with the passing of the years, and a revised view of Shakespearean (not to mention literary) criticism, the bloom is often, in this case, off the rose. show less

This is a most unusual essay, by a professor of life, imagination and wisdom (he taught literature at Swarthmore College), about how it is in staying true to our souls, to our creativity and the images that inspire us, that we will together overcome war and tyranny. This is not a usual Quaker essay on peace, however insightful; it has a different inspiration, vision, charm, and profundity. It is about resisting the world's demand to bend our imagination to its ways of power, and living by show more our own images that give us life and love. As enough of us do this, we will overcome war, as "the great unconscious collaboration we call spring" overcomes the tyranny of winter.
Goddard's writing is poetic and he quotes many poems. Poetry lovers will rate it 5 stars, I think, while those who prefer straight expository prose might give it less. but will learn something profound from it. It is worth reading more than once. show less